Could L.A. Be Heading Toward Toll Roads?

Eventually, even the unthinkable gets thought--including the possibility of toll lanes in Los Angeles, birthplace of the freeway.

Under a proposal picking up speed in government offices, solo commuters would pay a toll for the privilege of blowing past slow-moving traffic on Los Angeles freeways, while carpoolers could use the lanes for free.

A task force of business, environmental and labor leaders and transportation planners is considering Los Angeles County routes suitable for a toll lane experiment. The Antelope Valley Freeway is the front-runner. The lanes would be similar to those in operation on the Riverside Freeway in Orange County and Interstate 15 in San Diego County.

Those lanes were constructed as toll roads; the Los Angeles experiment would use existing carpool lanes. However, the change would face financial, political and environmental hurdles.

Planners also are considering toll lanes on Interstate 15 in Riverside County.

Planners say that introducing toll lanes to Los Angeles County will be politically more difficult, but potentially more significant because of the region’s fabled gridlock and its reputation as a testing grounds for new transportation ideas.

But don’t dig into your pocket yet.

The 70-member task force, known as REACH for Reduce Emissions and Congestion on Highways, is aware that tinkering with the sacred freeway system is politically risky, especially if it promotes something called “Lexus lanes” by critics.

“I know what names you get called when you try to do something new,” said Judy Wright, a former Claremont city councilwoman and past task force chairwoman.

(Separately, the Southern California Assn. of Governments has proposed using tolls on new truck lanes on the Golden State and Santa Ana freeways in Los Angeles County and on the Long Beach and Pomona freeways. Truckers would pay only if they wanted to get out of congested free lanes. But the president-elect of the California Trucking Assn. said he would oppose a toll. “We pay enough in highway taxes,” he said. The proposals call for moving the carpool lanes to an aerial structure, freeing up space on the roadway for truck lanes.)

And before freeways can become feeways, the state Legislature must give its approval. That’s no easy task, with Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer calling toll roads a “polite form of highway robbery.”

Federal approval is required for tolls on interstates. But President Clinton this year suggested giving states permission to charge tolls on interstates and use the revenue to improve their transportation systems.

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With the government facing environmental, financial and political obstacles to building new highways, “we see pricing as a way of improving the efficiency of the system,” said John Berg, team leader for highway revenue and pricing for the Federal Highway Administration.

“We use pricing in so many sectors of the economy to allocate scarce space,” Berg said. “Hotels charge more in peak season than in off peak. Phone calls cost you more during the middle of the day than if you call on the weekends.”

The REACH task force has been studying “congestion pricing” for nearly three years with $1.4 million in federal grants. The group has been working closely with the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the California Department of Transportation.

But local planners are moving cautiously, remembering the public revolt over the Santa Monica Freeway diamond lane in 1975. That experiment, abandoned after five months, involved taking away a lane open to all drivers and restricting it to carpools.

This time, planners will probably recommend adding a lane that would be open for free to carpoolers and for a yet to be specified fee to solo commuters. They also are exploring opening any new carpool lanes as toll lanes.

Other cities are watching Los Angeles.

“They know you have huge traffic, and the attitude is, ‘If it can be made to work in L.A., it can work anywhere,’ ” said Peter Samuel, editor of Toll Roads newsletter.

Nightmare images of Los Angeles’ traffic have become a staple of other cities’ political campaigns. In Denver, lawn signs in support of a recent light-rail measure known as 4A read: “4A or L.A.” In Portland, Ore., TV ads in support of a mass transit proposition offered the option: “Light rail or Los Angeles.”

Although the idea of introducing a toll--even if voluntary--in Los Angeles would appear to be a long shot, proponents believe that they can steer clear of political gridlock. They point to focus groups and polls showing public support for the concept.

To critics who call the lanes elitist, they say toll revenues could be used for mass transit and other traffic improvements that would benefit everybody. They also contend that the Riverside Freeway toll lanes carry just as many Hondas as Lexuses.

Planners see “high occupancy/toll” or HOT lanes, as they are called, as a way to head off catastrophic gridlock.

“We see growing interest in HOT lanes around the country,” said Kenneth Orski, chairman of the high occupancy/toll lane task force of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Washington.

With the era of building freeways in the Los Angeles region virtually at an end, transportation planners are now focused on finding ways to better manage what they have, such as using high-tech devices such as sensors in the pavement to alert authorities and motorists to trouble spots sooner.

Adding toll lanes to some of the most congested freeways--the Santa Monica, Hollywood, Santa Ana near downtown Los Angeles and Ventura through the San Fernando Valley--would be environmentally, financially and politically more difficult.

There is no space to add lanes without spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy land or build elevated roadways like the one on the Harbor Freeway.

Caltrans officials said the state agency first wants to complete its long-promised network of carpool lanes on the freeway system. But they said the agency would consider adding toll lanes if space is available to accommodate them.

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The toll lanes are considered a politically safer way to go--at least initially--than some of the other “congestion pricing” ideas under consideration, such as charging motorists a fee--perhaps 5 to 10 cents per mile--based on how far they drive during rush hour or an emissions fee based on how much their car pollutes. The REACH task force is still studying the ideas for the future, if needed.

“Freeways weren’t named freeways because they don’t cost money,” Wright said. “They were named freeways because they had no stop signals.”

A number of issues still must be resolved: Will opening up carpool lanes to solo-paying commuters clog those lanes and discourage carpooling? How should toll revenues be spent? And perhaps most important, is it fair to let those who can afford a toll speed by those who can’t?

Some think the idea of tolls in Freeway City will end up like proposals for subterranean freeways or opening the Los Angeles River to traffic during the dry season.

But proponents say circumstances have changed:

A recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute named Los Angeles the most congested city in the nation for the 10th year in a row, though some transit experts dispute the findings, saying Los Angeles’ traffic is no worse than other big cities. Traffic delays are projected to grow three times worse by 2020. The average round-trip commute--now about 45 minutes--could easily be an hour and a half longer early in the next century, planners say. And the percentage of drive-alone commuters--more than 70% of all commuters--continues to grow, despite efforts to promote carpooling.

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Toll collection is now fully automated; no need to stop any more at tollbooths, the image that East Coast transplants remember. Transponders installed on cars signal devices on the roadway and automatically debit drivers’ accounts. Cameras photograph cars without transponders, and tickets are mailed to car owners.

In Orange County, 29,000 cars each day use the Riverside Freeway toll lanes, which opened in December 1995. Drivers pay from 60 cents to $2.95 to shave an average 20 minutes off a 10-mile commute, officials say. The price varies depending on time of day and congestion level.

In San Diego County, 900 solo commuters pay $70 a month to drive in an eight-mile carpool/toll lane on I-15 under a federal demonstration project begun in December 1996.

But the more ethnically and politically diverse Los Angeles County could be a tougher place to establish toll lanes.

State Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles) said, “We should use our limited right-of-way space for bus express lanes and high-occupancy vehicle lanes, not high-income vehicle lanes.”

Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) said, “I don’t think transportation should be based upon whether or not [people] can afford it.”

But Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) said he would support a toll lane experiment in Los Angeles County and believes that the Legislature would approve it too. “We approved it in San Diego County,” he noted.

Ward Elliott, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College and longtime proponent of “congestion pricing,” said: “We have the most jammed roads and the most polluted air in the county and should, therefore, be more receptive at ground level, not less, than people in other cities.”

But in Minnesota, officials recently dropped plans for toll lanes after a challenger to the governor whipped up a public frenzy.

“We just don’t have the congestion here yet where people are desperate,” said Robert Johns, associate director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota. He said the public culture there is “very egalitarian and is not ready to help the rich get to work faster.”

Closer to home, Orange County officials recently backed off from a proposal to open up new carpool lanes on a section of the Riverside Freeway as toll lanes. The lanes would have extended the existing toll lanes to the Los Angeles County line. Opponents objected to “charging people to use a road that they already paid for.” Orange County, nonetheless, plans to study toll lanes on the Orange Freeway.

Toll lanes soon will open in Houston and are under study for a stretch of U.S. 101 through Sonoma County in Northern California and in Dallas, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and Boulder, Colo..

One of the ideas behind the toll lanes is to get better use out of underused carpool lanes.

“To the extent that there are [underused carpool] lanes in the L.A. area, [toll lanes] offer probably one of the few remaining opportunities to squeeze a little more traffic out of the system,” Orski said.

On the other hand, some carpool lanes are becoming congested.

“In order to keep the carpool lanes flowing smoothly,” said Deborah Redman, REACH project manager, “we may in a number of corridors face the issue of having to raise the eligibility to get on carpool lanes, from two persons to three persons, like it is in most of the rest of the country.”

Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said that adding toll lanes could win public support if it is clear that toll payers are financing the lane, and it is “not being subsidized by those who are watching the fast cars go by.”

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Faster, for a Fee

A task force that includes representatives from business, government, labor and environmental groups is considering the Antelope Valley Freeway for Los Angeles County’s first toll lanes, open to solo commuters for a fee and carpoolers for free. The project is being watched by transportation planners from around the country as a strategy for reducing smog and traffic gridlock in regions like Los Angeles where a high percent of commuters drive alone.

Use of Public Transit, by Income Level

Commute choice: Bus

Less than $12,000: 67%

$12,000-$24,999: 24%

$25,000-$49,999: 8%

$50,000-$69,999: 1%

$70,000-and above: 0%

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Commute choice: Carpool

Less than $12,000: 3%

$12,000-$24,999: 9%

$25,000-$49,999: 47%

$50,000-$69,999: 21%

$70,000-and above: 20%

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Commute choice: Commuter rail

Less than $12,000: 1%

$12,000-$24,999: 3%

$25,000-$49,999: 21%

$50,000-$69,999: 24%

$70,000-and above: 50%

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Commute choice: Drive alone

Less than $12,000: 4%

$12,000-$24,999: 20%

$25,000-$49,999: 26%

$50,000-$69,999: 20%

$70,000-and above: 30%

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Commute choice: Urban rail

Less than $12,000: 47%

$12,000-$24,999: 28%

$25,000-$49,999: 15%

$50,000-$69,999: 9%

$70,000-and above: 1%

White

Bicycle, motorcycle, walk/jog: 2.6%

Public bus: 1.1%

Train/rail: 0.3%

Drive alone: 83.5%

Carpool and vanpool: 12.5%

Black

Bicycle, motorcycle, walk/jog: 0.9%

Public bus: 3.1%

Drive alone: 77.8%

Carpool and vanpool: 18.2%

Latino

Bicycle, motorcycle, walk/jog: 2.1%

Drive alone: 72.7%

Carpool and vanpool: 21.1%

Public bus: 4.1%

Asian

Bicycle, motorcycle, walk/jog: .8%

Drive alone: 84.1%

Carpool and vanpool: 12.9%

Public bus: 2.3%

Sources: Southern California Assn. of Governments, U.S. Census